Poor People's Campaign

The Poor People's Campaign was an SCLC march on Washington DC that occurred from 12 May to 24 June 1968, a part of the wider Civil Rights movement. Martin Luther King Jr. planned to create a multiracial army of the poor to demonstrate outside of the US Congress until it passed an "economic bill of rights" to suit the needs of the poor people, whom King claimed were being ignored as the Vietnam War raged on. A 3,000-person protest camp was set up at the Washington Mall, and the protesters stayed there for six weeks. Ralph Abernathy took over the campaign after King's assassination on 4 April 1968, and the "Resurrection City" set up by protesters outside of King's place of death, Memphis, failed. The campaign was called the "Little Bighorn" of the Civil Rights movement, as it was one of the last campaigns by the movement to achieve its goals, and its failure to secure an "economic bill of rights" was demoralizing.